Over the past couple of months, we’ve been reporting on an experiment in using an academic blog to peer-review a scholarly book. The results are in, and we have an update today in The Chronicle.
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, an assistant professor of communication at the University of California at San Diego, has been posting the draft of his latest academic book online, piece by piece over a number of weeks, and letting anyone critique it. Though a couple of other academic authors have tried similar open peer reviews in the past on stand-alone Web sites, Mr. Wardrip-Fruin’s was unusual because it used an existing academic blog.
Mr. Wardrip-Fruin feels that the experiment was a success, though he notes that the model probably won’t replace traditional peer review. But he says today on the Grand Text Auto blog that replacing peer review was never his intent — he was simply interested in comparing the results and improving his book. —Jeffrey R. Young
